(image: kobizmedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Aug. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — One out of every 10 workers at South Korea’s top 30 business groups were irregular workers as of end-March this year, with the rate highest at construction firms, research data showed Wednesday.
According to an analysis by corporate tracker CEO Score of 360 companies who have over 300 full-time workers, the business groups checked had 119,577 non-regular workers, or 9.6 percent of the total 1.24 million. The latest figure marks a 4.2-percent drop from last year.
The top three conglomerates with the highest ratio of irregular workers were all builders, Daelim with 46.7 percent, Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. with 39.4 percent, and Booyoung with 31.6 percent.
Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering had the lowest at 1.3 percent.
South Korea’s largest business Group Samsung reported 5.6 percent of its staff being irregular workers.
By individual companies, Procare, a building management affiliate of GS Group, was 100 percent run by irregular workers.
CEO Score also counted the number of subcontracted workers, who are hired and managed by a third party and dispatched to a different worksite. They numbered 561,241 as of end of March, accounting for 45 percent of the total workforce. These workers are considered to have more tenuous and weak employment conditions as they are unable to receive benefits or rights protection because they are not directly hired by the company they work for.
Again, construction companies had the highest rate of subcontracted workers. At Booyoung, the number of such staff was four-fold that of direct hirees. For Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co., the ratio was double the number of regular workers.
(Yonhap)
